HOW I SURVIVED MY FIRST DATE AFTER DIVORCE

It had been 16 years since Emma Morby, 41. had been wined and dined...

Answering question after question about my property business it would be easy to assume I was at a job interview. But, in fact, I was sitting in a restaurant, slowly tucking into my main course, being interrogated by my date. Not just any date, my first date in 16 years. It was going terribly and I was beginning to question why I had even bothered putting myself out there in the first place.

It was February 2022, and Dan* and I had got talking online months previously after he sent me a message about the holiday snaps I’d posted on my social media. He’d been following me for a while, liking the occasional photo here and tweet there and when he finally sent me a direct message, the conversation flowed easily.

MEETING FACE TO FACE

Speaking about our kids from previous relationships, I told him how I’d gone through a divorce four years earlier and had started my property development business to support my family. Dan was polite about my work, but he didn’t show much interest.